'Madaneya' or 'Islamiya'? Which will the new Egypt be?

Take a look at this man. As Deputy Chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, Rashad Mohamed Al-Bayoumi is a leader of the best organized political force in today's Egypt. This raises a big question mark over the revolution: Will an Islamist group become the strongest political party in an Egyptian democracy, and will they be ready to play by democratic rules?

Long banned as a party, the Brotherhood, known as the Ikhwan, proved its electoral skills in 2005 by running candidates as individuals (without party labels) and winning twenty per cent of the open seats. In the new Egypt, the Ikhwan will almost certainly become a political party, soon. And then what?

I visited Bayoumi in a shabby but bustling Brotherhood headquarters in the middle class Manial district of Cairo, riding up to their fifth floor headquarters in a rickety elevator. The Deputy Chairman looks grandfatherly, but he's tough. He's spent a total of 18 years in grim Egyptian prisons.

But he was eager to assure me that the Brotherhood, which renounced violence decades ago, is no threat. "An Iran-type government can't exist here because this is a civil state," he said. " Mubarak used the Muslim Brotherhood issue as a scarecrow" he said, to justify squelching all Egyptian political life. But also he said other things that raised serious questions about his definition of "civil" state, such as saying, should his party win power, that they could never accept a woman or Coptic Christian as president.

Almost every Egyptian with whom I spoke - in Cairo neighborhoods and among student leaders - said the Ikhwan could never win a majority of seats or establish an Islamic State. Indeed the term "civil state" has become a rallying cry and young demonstrators chant "madaneya, madaneya" which means "civil" in Arabic.

But even if the Brothers win only around 20-30 per cent of parliamentary seats – a common estimate – the Mubarak regime so thoroughly crushed non-Islamist parties that it will take time for new ones to develop and compete with the Ikhwan. New elections are set to be held in six months, and many young revolutionaries say that isn't enough time to organize other party blocs to balance the Islamists.

"Madaneya" or "Islamiya"? Which will it be? That is one of the biggest questions facing the Egyptian revolution. I will write more about this in my columns this week.